Ernst Otto Beckmann (1853-1923)

German chemist, born in Solingen. He studied in Leipzig under Hermann Kolbe and was professor at Giessen, Erlangen and Leipzig; in 1912 he became director of the new Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in Berlin-Dahlem.

In 1886 he discovered that oximes are converted into amides in acid, the Beckmann rearrangement. He also designed the Beckmann thermometer, which measures very small temperature differences and was used to determine molecular masses by cryoscopy and ebullioscopy.